On 20th April 2024, NUJS conducted a one-day workshop on Teaching Law Beyond Google. The workshop started with the Chairman of NUJS IQAC, Prof. Dr. Sandeepa Bhat, highlighting that with everything now just a Google search away, teachers must go ‘beyond’ Google to maintain our relevance in the classroom.
Following the felicitation of our revered guests, during the introductory session, Dr. John Felix Raj, Vice Chancellor of St. Xavier’s University, stressed the importance of coming together in large groups such as today’s and discussing these developments together so that we all may go ‘beyond Google’. This was followed by a short speech from Prof. N.K. Chakrabarti mentioned that while teaching law, we should try to go beyond just what is written and connect classroom teachings with modern instances and developments of relevance.
The first session started with Prof. Dr. Vijayakumar, Former Vice Chancellor of NLIU, Bhopal. He illustrated the importance of going beyond Google through a very simple example. The fact that Google can only give us answers about who is the head of the state or the head of the government but cannot accurately capture the discourse surrounding it was truly eye-opening. He also highlighted how to be a good teacher; one must never stop being a student, as in, never stop learning.
In the next session, Prof. Dr. Ashok Patil, Vice Chancellor of NUSRL, explained the importance of deep empirical research on real-world problems for which Google cannot provide an answer. He provided examples of how the empirical research conducted by his students has been sent to policymakers as recommendations. This is undoubtedly a way to extend the boundaries of existing knowledge.
In the final technical session, Prof. N.K. Chakrabarti gave us a real-world example of how to conduct a class for students on tortious liability in a way that would essentially make them think. He started his lecture by mentioning that contrary to what we believe, students want to learn from their teachers, not from books or the Internet. True to his earlier words, he discussed tortious liability for several relevant events, such as recent aeroplane crashes or accidents involving self-driving cars.
The workshop was concluded with a lively discourse among the resource persons and participants.
